Pros

Cons

Does not automatically perform ACH reimbursements.
Only integrated with QuickBooks.

Bottom Line

Certify Now is great expense monitoring software for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) that serves both mobile users and company finance departments well.

Feb. 1, 2019

Tracking your expenses may seem like a painful process, but you'll find many choices in cloud solutions that automate this task. Certify (which begins at $8 per user) is a solid option when it comes to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) expense reporting products. It offers a mobile application that's super easy to use, and the back end offers all of the customizable administrative functionality you'll need and more. Along with Rydoo and Expensify, it was an easy pick for our Editors' Choice designation in our review roundup.

Flexible Pricing

Certify's pricing is competitive with the other products reviewed. The plan, as tested, costs $8 per user per month and is the preferred plan for most 1- to 25-seat small businesses. Those small to midsize businesses (SMBs) on a growth spurt, usually 25-200 seats, are best served by the Professional plan, which comes with a $9-per-seat or $7-per-transaction fee and a $1,500-$3,500 implementation fee. The Enterprise plan is best for over 200 seats, costs $9 per transaction, and has an implementation fee north of $3,500 depending on company size and setup complexity.

Companies select either per-user or per-transaction pricing. Smaller companies tend to prefer the user pricing as they have only a select number of employees that need the product. Larger organizations like per-transaction pricing as they prefer to have all employees loaded into Certify. Companies with uneven expense schedules can also use an annual prepaid program in which they buy a block of transactions. There is also an additional fee for the company's ACH program starting at $1 per transaction; Certify has an optional travel booking program as well.

Hassle-Free Setup

Setup for the small-business Certify plan is self-service and accomplished via a free 15-day trial with no need to drop a credit card initially. To test this product, I used a combination of both a preconfigured Certify account and an account I set up for myself to better understand the Admin account configuration experience. Once my account was created, Certify guided me immediately to available resources where I found its Self-Service Implementation Guide and a link to its Certify Training Camp. These were great resources that took me step by step through the onboarding process. While not quite as simple as something like Abacus, Certify's setup process nevertheless shouldn't be an impediment to customers of any technical skill level.

I started by setting up departments, since in Certify every user must be a member of a department. Next, I added required categories and then designated policy settings, set mileage rates (you can simply go with the latest IRS rates, which are automatically added), and added users. There is a video on exactly how to accomplish each of these tasks, which made setup on the service a piece of cake. Mobile apps are free and available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even Blackberry, from any of the appropriate app stores as well as on the Certify website. The company has made setup and onboarding even easier with a setup wizard for new users. This includes a "What's Next" panel to guide users through the onboarding process to set up the Certify Mobile app, configure direct deposit, add credit cards, and take advantage of the training and tutorials in the Certify Training Camp.

Beyond the Basics

Certify's support and resources were the best and most thorough of all the products reviewed, more comprehensive than that of Concur Expense

In the support section, I found several different means of getting any help needed, including the email address for my sysadmin, a phone number to talk to a live tech (available 24/5), a Knowledge Base, and an FAQ. By comparison, Abacus offers a Search box from its support link.

The web-based dashboard has been redesigned since the last time we reviewed this product, and is even better organized than before, giving easy access to various features. I could access my Certify Wallet, which holds all of my pending receipts and expenses; add new receipts and expenses via mobile, email, upload and even fax; start a new report or check the status of existing ones; use the ReportExecutive feature to automatically assemble and schedule reports; and use SpendSmart to find great restaurants, hotels, and other vendors.

Certify's employee feature set is rich beyond standard expense tracking capabilities, with features such as receipt capture from your smartphone camera, receipt storage, geo-location services, and free mobile apps. The Admin feature set includes typical tasks such as control over approval routing, multiple user roles, personal credit card integration, cloud receipt storage, and the SMB version I tested integrates with Intuit QuickBooks Online Plusaccounting software. For those not using QuickBooks, the Certify Professional Plan integrates with other accounting packages including Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle NetSuite, and SAP, among others—although you'll need to work with Certify Integration Services to makes those connections happen.

With Certify, you can add direct deposit reimbursements, corporate card integration, foreign currency reimbursements, multicurrency reports, and real-time reporting to your system. You can also deduct daily business commute expenses by selecting the commute distance category in your expense reports. Certify has enhanced its reporting capabilities since our last review with the ability to print enterprise dashboards as PDF files, as well as new expense policy report views, print report updates, and a new processed date column added to My Expense Reports. Another handy feature is Certify's ability to create, on a set timeline, a draft report for a manage to review.

Certify stores all existing customer data for the required seven years, but if a customer disconnects from Certify, it removes all data after 90 days. Cloud receipt storage is included in all Certify plans. For added peace of mind, Certify also offers an opt-in service allowing customers to download a copy of the monthly data, which costs $25 per month.

Security for all Certify plans is comprehensive, using Symantec Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates and running Verisign weekly vulnerability assessment tests. The company partners with ControlScan for quarterly and annual PCI compliance certification, and uses Rackspace SSAE 16 Certified data centers. Certify also has available an application programming interface (API) for deeper integrations.

OCR Magic

The Android app is one of the best I've experienced, and one of the most accurate. The main page lets you either take a photo of a receipt or manually type in an expense. When you choose receipt, you are asked to select your image resolution among high, medium, or low. You can also pick up a previously photographed image from your phone's gallery. Once you've taken the photo, you can accept or reject it (unfortunately, the Android version lacks the clean-up options the iOS app offers). You are then sent to the Enter Expense page, and an autofill button will read the receipt in a few seconds a using its trade-marked ReceiptParse technology. You can then make any corrections you wish. A Cleanup wizard lets you review all expenses that need attention for any reason—for example, those that go over the allowed expense—letting you avoid nasty surprises later. Certify also has direct integration with several vendors such as Uber.

Once your receipts are entered, you need go back to the main screen and manually sync them, using a button on the upper left-hand corner.

After all of your receipts or expenses are entered, you can then create a new report, check to see if any of the expenses violate any rules, and then submit the report. If you have more than one person who can approve your expenses, then you can select the individual to which you'd like to send them. You can then submit it after you pass a screen that asks you to rate some of the places that appear on your expense report (for example, in my case, it was Staples and Dunkin Donuts).

Other buttons on the main screen let you check out and reply to any inquiries that have been made about your expenses up the line, and let you use Certify's travel app to book flights, hotels, rental cars, etc.

All in all, Certify is an exceedingly well-rounded expense tracking product that suits an SMB environment, and will be there with enterprise support when the SMB is ready. The product does a great job of marrying admin and finance demands with a mobile user's need for end-to-end expense reporting simplicity. Of the products I tested, Certify is tied with Rydoo for our Editors' Choice as the expense tracking software with the most to offer for SMBs.

Rob was previously an editor at SD Times covering software, managing social media, and writing narrative-driven features on any offbeat story or trend he could find. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications ... See Full Bio